Wilson Dam: Setting the Stage

With the U.S. entrenched in World War I, President Woodrow Wilson called for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals to produce explosives for the war effort and a hydroelectric dam to power them both. Construction began on Wilson Dam in 1918, and the region immediately began to see its benefits as the reservoir curtailed local flooding and tamed the previously impassable Shoals for the first time. When the war ended, the need for a large supply of munitions ended as well, and the plants stopped production. Henry Ford then tried to purchase the facilities at Muscle Shoals, hoping to use their cheap electricity in his goal of turning Muscle Shoals into a Detroit of the South. George Norris, a Nebraska senator, instead believed that the dam and its adjacent nitrate facilities could serve a greater purpose for the people of the Tennessee Valley. He argued that the Valley’s three major problems—persistent flooding, a lack of electric power, and depleted soil caused by poor farming practices—could be addressed by building more dams like Wilson and converting its nitrate facilities to produce fertilizer. Although the plan stalled in Congress, the long debate eventually led Ford to withdraw his proposal, and Norris’s plan for the region soon gained the attention of an important ally and became the catalyst for the revitalization of the Tennessee Valley.

Alabama · United States